On June 16 you received a letter from a group of Cuban Americans calling themselves Inspire America Foundation. This Foundation urged you to “finish the job of reversing the policies implemented by the Obama administration.” To this end, the letter recommends ten “initiatives” aimed at hardening US policy towards Cuba, presumably in order to hasten the regime change that the United States government has hoped to bring about in Cuba since 1960.

We, the undersigned, urge you to consider two propositions: First, Inspire America Foundation does not represent the views of Cuban Americans, and second, the Cuban people and not the Cuban government would suffer the adverse effects of the recommended initiatives.

As for the first proposition, the authors of the letter from Inspire America Foundation made a significant false claim, namely, that Cuban Americans voted for you by 2-1 margins. According to Pew Research Center, about 54 percent of Cubans in Florida voted for you in November 2016. Moreover, according to a 2016 Florida International University study, the “FIU Cuba Poll,” “Nearly 70 percent of Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade County supported the U.S. decision to open diplomatic relations with Cuba and a strong majority (63 percent) oppose the U.S. embargo of the island nation.” In other words, for most Cuban Americans in Miami-Dade County, President Obama’s policy changes did not go far enough.

As for the second proposition, it is a distressing fact that US policy towards Cuba has proposed to ignite regime change by causing unbearable hardship among ordinary Cubans. In his 1960 memo on “The Decline and Fall of Castro,” Lester Mallory, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, proposed that the United States should “call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

We, the undersigned, would not take lightly any effort on the part of your administration to revert to those unsuccessful, unethical, and illegal policies that have already contributed to the hunger and desperation of our family members and friends on the Cuban archipelago. Indeed, we would interpret any implementation of those measures against our loved ones as measures taken against our own best interests, and we will work to mobilize the majority that opposes such measures.

Your margins among Cuban voters are not as strong as the letter from Inspire America Foundation claims. Indeed, while the loudest and best-funded voices coming out of South Florida have traditionally supported a hard line against Cuba, that generation is running out of time. Time and demographic realities tell us that their days are numbered. Any measures taken to increase the hunger and desperation of our friends and family in Cuba will be met with a voter registration drive and a get-out-the-vote initiative in 2020 the likes of which Miami-Dade has never seen before. Keep in mind that the majority of Cubans in South Florida supported President Obama’s initiatives, and you must not take the support of Cuban Americans for granted.

For the aforementioned reasons, we urge you to disregard the recommendations of Inspire America Foundation, an organization that, as we have stressed, in no way represents the experience or the will of our community. We urge you to listen instead to the politically committed new Cuban American majority.